Activision Apologizes for Real Itaewon Crush Footage in Modern Warfare 4

The publisher says a Nov. 12 update will remove the clip after families of the 159 victims and South Korea's safety minister objected.

Near the start of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, a paramedic gives CPR to someone lying in a Seoul street. The clip is real news footage from the Itaewon crowd crush, which killed 159 people during Halloween festivities four years ago.

Activision apologized Friday and said it will take the footage out of the game, Video Games Chronicle reported, after the victims' families spoke out. The publisher told the Korean broadcaster MBC that a game update scheduled for Nov. 12 will remove the clip entirely, the Korea Herald reported.

In the game, the clip stands in for civilian casualties in a fictional war with North Korea, according to Yonhap's report in the Korea JoongAng Daily. The bereaved families said using it showed Activision was "lacking common sense" and demanded that the footage come out completely, Yonhap reported.

South Korea's government spoke up before Activision apologized. Yun Ho-jung, the country's interior and safety minister, told reporters Thursday that the clip amounted to "secondary harm" and that fitting sanctions should follow, Inven Global reported. He left it to the relevant agencies to decide whether that means a penalty or making the game harder to get.

Activision's statement leaned on the fact that the game is fiction. The company said Modern Warfare 4 was built for realistic immersion and that its use of actual broadcast footage was never meant to recall or make light of any tragedy, Itaewon included. It apologized to the victims, their families and everyone the clip hurt or worried.

That apology landed seven days after Modern Warfare 4 went on sale, and two days after Activision's first statement on the footage, according to Inven Global. It also came one day after the fourth anniversary of the crush, on Oct. 29. The footage is due to leave the game on Nov. 12, two weeks after that anniversary.

Source: koreaherald.com, retrieved October 31, 2026. Other sources: koreajoongangdaily.com, invenglobal.com.